There is a best-selling book called "Genius on the Left, Madman on the Right", madman and genius actually do not have a particularly obvious dividing line, in the field of humanities, arts, science and technology finance, in fact, often swim on the edge of madness, we often say that so-and-so is a genius, but also said that he is like crazy. What do geniuses and lunatics have in common? It's passion. Hello everyone, here is a small broadcast reading, today we share the philosophical ideas of the famous philosopher Foucault of the 20th century.
Today we begin to introduce one of Foucault's masterpieces, "Madness and Civilization", which is actually a doctoral dissertation by Foucault, but it can write nearly 200,000 words of the doctoral dissertation, which may not be ordinary people, and the ideological point of view is also very subversive. Why research such an unpopular topic may be because Foucault suffered from depression in college and homosexual tendencies that made him want to commit suicide several times. After graduating from university, Foucault also became a psychology teacher at the Paris High School, and also began an internship in a hospital, he conducted in-depth research on the activity of brain waves, and paid special attention to various neuropathies such as madness, and also spent a lot of time reading relevant works and collecting materials to achieve the book "Madness and Civilization".
Of course, this book is not a hospital book, and Foucault, a philosophy major, does not analyze the treatment of neurological diseases such as madness from a pathological and medical point of view, but conducts an "archaeology" of madness, asks about the deep connotation of madness, and asks how the knowledge and discourse of madness are constructed. In Foucault's view, madness is not a disease, but a representative of irrationality, representing a passion, and civilization represents a kind of reason, and what we think of as "madness" is a disease, even evil, which is the product of the "civilization" of reason. Therefore, in the book, Foucault did not praise human reason and civilization, but criticized the knowledge and reason that represented human civilization.
We start from leprosy, leprosy and human civilization coexisted for thousands of years, is the most ancient plague of mankind, since there are records of civilization, leprosy has always been there, in the ancient Egyptian pharaoh's clay pot, in the ancient Indian Sanskrit classics, in the ancient Babylonian cuneiform script, and China's ancient "Warring States Policy" also records the Yin Shang period, Ji jī zi lacquer body to avoid the scourge of death, the Warring States period there is also an assassin called Yu Rang, disguised as a leper to assassinate the king of another princely state, and so on. The fear of leprosy in ancient times often appeared in our film and television works.
The same is true in Europe, especially in medieval Europe, where leprosy has been afflicting Europeans. It was not until the end of the Middle Ages, from the around the 14th century, that leprosy gradually decreased, on the one hand, because the Crusades ended the crusades and cut off the spread of the virus, on the other hand, the most important thing was that the lepers were "isolated" at that time, although the lepers gradually decreased, but the fear of leprosy did not disappear, and in the next few centuries, poor displaced people, criminals and deranged people took over the role of leprosy in people's hearts.
In the Renaissance, there was a phenomenon called "Fool's Ship", originally "Fool's Ship" is a literary word, in the ancient story, the Fool's Ship is filled with people's ideal heroes, moral models and social models, they carry out great voyages. But during the Renaissance, such fool ships were used to isolate poor displaced people, criminals, and deranged people, who were treated as a "symbol of uneasiness," forcibly kept on ships as aliens, isolated, and exiled. Slowly the ship of fools became a social phenomenon, they became the object of threats and ridicule, they were the representatives of irrationality and the laughing stock of others.
Foucault reflected deeply on such social realities. This mockery of madness, he said, replaced the fear of death. People have transformed the madman's fear of facing the desperate situation of death into the heart through literary and artistic irony, and people have gradually lifted this fear, turned death into a laughing stock, turned them into a daily form of blandness, scattered them in all the sins, sufferings and absurdities, and death and destruction are no longer nothing, because they are everywhere, and madness is death that has already been present. But people have become accustomed to them, and eventually these madmen have become the antithesis of reason and morality, the enemy of traditional reason and morality.
The helplessness and despair of death faced by the madman are forgotten, they are forcibly locked in ships, drifting from one city to another, they are ostracized by the masses, exiled to the sea or in deserted places, they have to resign themselves to fate, and any voyage may be the last.
In fact, such ironic themes often appear in many of our daily literary and artistic works, such as some of the sketches of Teacher Zhao Benshan before, Teacher Fan Wei often represents "stupid" and "mentally abnormal" people, and in the sketches, they are often fooled by various kinds, and we see such sketches, often laughing over, but many people also criticize that such sketches are a collective mockery of vulnerable groups, which is very immoral. Turning others' illness, suffering, and even fear of death into a laughing stock is Foucault's critique at the beginning of Madness and Civilization.
Why is there such a social phenomenon as the Fool's Ship? Foucault went on to ask that after the European Middle Ages, people ended their fear of leprosy, and this position of inner fear did not disappear, but was replaced by aliens such as the madman and the poor outcast, and in order to negativeize the fear in people's hearts, the madman became an auxiliary comedic factor, the deception of deception, who uttered rational words in stupid and foolish language, thus creating a comedic effect in a comical way, they talked about love to lovers, they told young people the truth of life, to the arrogant and the arrogant "civilized man" Speaking of the middle way, and all of this became part of the comedy. Even Europeans have made the traditional April Fool's Day a dramatic event. In short, the madman and the fool are gradually labeled, become the object of ridicule, become the representative of irrationality, and even be criticized by society and morality. Foucault says that the theme of madness replacing the theme of death does not mark a rupture, but rather an internal turn in worry. Or rather, they are just victims or substitutes for people's fear of death.
In religion and works of art, madness shows an irrationality, a kind of animal nature, in the works of Shakespeare and Cervantes, madness represents pain and death, and in religion, madness is the embodiment of the beastman, the pole of human depravity, the most obvious sign of man's sin, the object furthest from God's mercy. But is that really the case? Is madness useless and an enemy of human reason and civilization?
There is a best-selling book "Genius on the Left, Madman on the Right", the madman and the genius do not have a particularly obvious dividing line, the genius and the madman have in common is passion. Foucault believed that the source of madness is a very important factor is passion, passion is the basis of madness, passion is the convergence point of body and soul, where the active soul and the passive body make contact and influence each other. Foucault said that the possibility of madness is also implicit in the phenomenon of passion, which remained closely linked between passion and madness in the 18th century, many centuries before the advent of modern man, and passion can be said to be a temporary, slight madness.
Speaking of which, we have to say that the influence of Nietzsche's philosophy on Foucault, in Nietzsche's philosophy, Dionysus is the representative of passion, and the sun god Apollo is the representative of reason, and Nietzsche calls the spirit of Dionysus the spirit of Dionysus, and the spirit of Apollo the spirit of the sun. The Spirit of Dionysus comes from passion, which means the impulse of nature, the expression of irrationality and inner emotions of man, a manifestation of the instinctive power of life. Nietzsche affirmed the power of the life instinct, opposed traditional rationalism, advocated the "philosophy of Dionysus", Dionysus, like a drunk and half-awake man, symbolized a strong impulse and energy of life, which Nietzsche praised as the power of life, which Nietzsche called: the strong will. Nietzsche's praise of dionysus spirit and passion, and Foucault's praise of madness and passion, are intrinsically consistent. Passion is the source of creativity and the release of human life energy, and madness is the cessation or extreme state of passion.
Foucault said that the wild hazards of madness are intrinsically linked to the hazards of passion, a series of fatal consequences of passion, but it is not because of this that we should be hostile to and/or indifferent to madness. Maintaining respect for madness, Foucault says, is not a respect for disease, but a lower limit for acknowledging this human truth. This boundary is not accidental, but fundamental. Just as death is the limit of human life in the realm of time, madness is the limit of human life in the realm of the wild. Christianity makes death holy and holy, and the madness that best manifests wildness should also become holy. Why Foucault can put forward such a profound criticism and reflection, of course, has a lot to do with Foucault's own experience, he is a vulnerable group himself, long-term depression pain and homosexual tendencies, long-term as an outlier and minority in the group, so he can empathize with such a social situation.
Well, today's content is this, the next issue of content, we follow Foucault's perspective, look at the 17th century, madness and civilization, the first real sense of the collision, Foucault said, 1656 is a historic moment, what really happened in this year? Let's talk about the next video. If you like my article, please pay attention to "Skit Reading", we will see you in the next article.